NAMPONT
THE POSTILION
The concern which the poor fellow’s story threw me into required some attention; the postilion paid not the least to it, but set off upon the pavé in a full gallop.
The thirstiest soul in the most sandy desert of Arabia could not have wished more for a cup of cold water, than mine did for grave and quiet movements; and I should have had an high opinion of the postilion had he but stolen off with me in something like a pensive pace.—On the contrary, as the mourner finished his lamentation, the fellow gave an unfeeling lash to each of his beasts, and set off clattering like a thousand devils.
I called to him as loud as I could, for heaven’s sake to go slower:—and the louder I called, the more unmercifully he galloped.—The deuce take him and his galloping too—said I,—he’ll go on tearing my nerves to pieces till he has worked me into a foolish passion, and then he’ll go slow that I may enjoy the sweets of it.
The postilion managed the point to a miracle: by the time he had got to the foot of a steep hill, about half a league from Nampont,—he had put me out of temper with him,—and then with myself, for being so.
My case then required a different treatment; and a good rattling gallop would have been of real service to me.—
–Then, prithee, get on—get on, my good lad, said I.
The postilion pointed to the hill.—I then tried to return back to the story of the poor German and his ass—but I had broke the clue,—and could no more get into it again, than the postilion could into a trot.
–The deuce go, said I, with it all! Here am I sitting as candidly disposed to make the best of the worst, as ever wight was, and all runs counter.
There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which Nature holds out to us: so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep; and the first word which roused me was Amiens.
–Bless me! said I, rubbing my eyes,—this is the very town where my poor lady is to come.
AMIENS
The words were scarce out of my mouth when the Count de L—’s post-chaise, with his sister in it, drove hastily by: she had just time to make me a bow of recognition,—and of that particular kind of it, which told me she had not yet done with me. She was as good as her look; for, before I had quite finished my supper, her brother’s servant came into the room with a billet, in which she said she had taken the liberty to charge me with a letter, which I was to present myself to Madame R— the first morning I had nothing to do at Paris. There was only added, she was sorry, but from what penchant she had not considered, that she had been prevented telling me her story,—that she still owed it to me; and if my route should ever lay through Brussels, and I had not by then forgot the name of Madame de L—,—that Madame de L— would be glad to discharge her obligation.
Then I will meet thee, said I, fair spirit! at Brussels;—’tis only returning from Italy through Germany to Holland, by the route of Flanders, home;—’twill scarce be ten posts out of my way; but, were it ten thousand! with what a moral delight will it crown my journey, in sharing in the sickening incidents of a tale of misery told to me by such a sufferer? To see her weep! and, though I cannot dry up the fountain of her tears, what an exquisite sensation is there still left, in wiping them away from off the cheeks of the first and fairest of women, as I’m sitting with my handkerchief in my hand in silence the whole night beside her?
There was nothing wrong in the sentiment; and yet I instantly reproached my heart with it in the bitterest and most reprobate of expressions.
It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one; and my last flame happening to be blown out by a whiff of jealousy on the sudden turn of a corner, I had lighted it up afresh at the pure taper of Eliza but about three months before,—swearing, as I did it, that it should last me through the whole journey.—Why should I dissemble the matter? I had sworn to her eternal fidelity;—she had a right to my whole heart:—to divide my affections was to lessen them;—to expose them was to risk them: where there is risk there may be loss:—and what wilt thou have, Yorick, to answer to a heart so full of trust and confidence—so good, so gentle, and unreproaching!
–I will not go to Brussels, replied I, interrupting myself.—But my imagination went on,—I recalled her looks at that crisis of our separation, when neither of us had power to say adieu! I look’d at the picture she had tied in a black riband about my neck,—and blush’d as I look’d at it.—I would have given the world to have kiss’d it,—but was ashamed.—And shall this tender flower, said I, pressing it between my hands,—shall it be smitten to its very root,—and smitten, Yorick! by thee, who hast promised to shelter it in thy breast?
Eternal Fountain of Happiness! said I, kneeling down upon the ground,—be thou my witness—and every pure spirit which tastes it, be my witness also, That I would not travel to Brussels, unless Eliza went along with me, did the road lead me towards heaven!
In transports of this kind, the heart, in spite of the understanding, will always say too much.
THE LETTER
AMIENS
Fortune had not smiled upon La Fleur; for he had been unsuccessful in his feats of chivalry,—and not one thing had offered to signalise his zeal for my service from the time that he had entered into it, which was almost four-and-twenty hours. The poor soul burn’d with impatience; and the Count de L—’s servant coming with the letter, being the first practicable occasion which offer’d, La Fleur had laid hold of it; and, in order to do honour to his master, had taken him into a back parlour in the auberge, and treated him with a cup or two of the best wine in Picardy; and the Count de L—’s servant, in return, and not to be behindhand in politeness with La Fleur, had taken him back with him to the Count’s hotel. La Fleur’s prevenancy (for there was a passport in his very looks) soon set every servant in the kitchen at ease with him; and as a Frenchman, whatever be his talents, has no sort of prudery in showing them, La Fleur, in less than five minutes, had pulled out his fife, and leading off the dance himself with the first note, set the fille de chambre, the maître d’hôtel, the cook, the scullion, and all the house-hold, dogs and cats, besides an old monkey, a dancing: I suppose there never was a merrier kitchen since the flood.
Madame de L—, in passing from her brother’s apartments to her own, hearing so much jollity below stairs, rung up her fille de chambre to ask about it; and, hearing it was the English gentleman’s servant, who had set the whole house merry with his pipe, she ordered him up.
As the poor fellow could not present himself empty, he had loaded himself in going up stairs with a thousand compliments to Madame de L—, on the part of his master,—added a long apocrypha of inquiries after Madame de L—’s health,—told her, that Monsieur his master was au désespoire for her re-establishment from the fatigues of her journey,—and, to close all, that Monsieur had received the letter which Madame had done him the honour—And he has done me the honour, said Madame de L—, interrupting La Fleur, to send a billet in return.
Madame de L— had said this with such a tone of reliance upon the fact, that La Fleur had not power to disappoint her expectations;—he trembled for my honour,—and possibly might not altogether be unconcerned for his own, as a man capable of being attached to a master who could be wanting en égards vis à vis d’une femme! so that when Madame de L— asked La Fleur if he had brought a letter,—O qu’oui, said La Fleur: so laying down his hat upon the ground, and taking hold of the flap of his right side pocket with his left hand, he began to search for the letter with his right;—then contrariwise.—Diable! then sought every pocket—pocket by pocket, round, not forgetting his fob:—Peste!—then La Fleur emptied them upon the floor,—pulled out a dirty cravat,—a handkerchief,—a comb,—a whip lash,—a nightcap,—then gave a peep into his hat,—Quelle étourderie! He had left the letter upon the table in the auberge;—he would run for it, and be back with it in three minutes.
I had just finished my supper when La Fleur came in to give me an account of his adventure: he told the whole story simply as it was: and only added that if Monsieur had forgot (par hazard) to answer Madame’s letter, the arrangement gave him an opportunity to recover the faux pas;—and if not, that things were only as they were.
Now I was not altogether sure of my étiquette, whether I ought to have wrote or no;—but if I had,—a devil himself could not have been angry: ’twas but the officious zeal of a well meaning creature for my honour; and, however he might have mistook the road,—or embarrassed me in so doing,—his heart was in no fault,—I was under no necessity to write;—and, what weighed more than all,—he did not look as if he had done amiss.
–’Tis all very well, La Fleur, said I.—’Twas sufficient. La Fleur flew out of the room like lightning, and returned with pen, ink, and paper, in his hand; and, coming up to the table, laid them close before me, with such a delight in his countenance, that I could not help taking up the pen.
I began and began again; and, though I had nothing to say, and that nothing might have been expressed in half a dozen lines, I made half a dozen different beginnings, and could no way please myself.
In short, I was in no mood to write.
La Fleur stepp’d out and brought a little water in a glass to dilute my ink,—then fetch’d sand and seal-wax.—It was all one; I wrote, and blotted, and tore off, and burnt, and wrote again.—Le diable l’emporte! said I, half to myself,—I cannot write this self-same letter, throwing the pen down despairingly as I said it.
As soon as I had cast down my pen, La Fleur advanced with the most respectful carriage up to the table, and making a thousand apologies for the liberty he was going to take, told me he had a letter in his pocket wrote by a drummer in his regiment to a corporal’s wife, which he durst say would suit the occasion.
I had a mind to let the poor fellow have his humour.—Then prithee, said I, let me see it.
La Fleur instantly pulled out a little dirty pocket book cramm’d full of small letters and billet-doux in a sad condition, and laying it upon the table, and then untying the string which held them all together, run them over, one by one, till he came to the letter in question,—La voila! said he, clapping his hands: so, unfolding it first, he laid it open before me, and retired three steps from the table whilst I read it.
THE LETTER
Madame,
Je suis pénétré de la douleur la plus vive, et réduit en même temps au désespoir par ce retour imprévù du Caporal qui rend notre entrevûe de ce soir la chose du monde la plus impossible.
Mais vive la joie! et toute la mienne sera de penser à vous.
L’amour n’est rien sans sentiment.
Et le sentiment est encore moins sans amour.
On dit qu’on ne doit jamais se désesperér.
On dit aussi que Monsieur le Caporal monte la garde Mercredi: alors ce cera mon tour.
Chacun à son tour.
En attendant—Vive l’amour! et vive la bagatelle!
Je suis, Madame,Avec tous les sentimens les plus
respectueux et les plus tendres,tout à vous,Jaques Roque.
It was but changing the Corporal into the Count,—and saying nothing about mounting guard on Wednesday,—and the letter was neither right nor wrong:—so, to gratify the poor fellow, who stood trembling for my honour, his own, and the honour of his letter,—I took the cream gently off it, and whipping it up in my own way, I seal’d it up and sent him with it to Madame de L—;—and the next morning we pursued our journey to Paris.
PARIS
When a man can contest the point by dint of equipage, and carry all on floundering before him with half a dozen of lackies and a couple of cooks—’tis very well in such a place as Paris,—he may drive in at which end of a street he will.
A poor prince who is weak in cavalry, and whose whole infantry does not exceed a single man, had best quit the field, and signalize himself in the cabinet, if he can get up into it;—I say up into it—for there is no descending perpendicular amongst ’em with a “Me voici! mes enfans”—here I am—whatever many may think.
I own my first sensations, as soon as I was left solitary and alone in my own chamber in the hotel, were far from being so flattering as I had prefigured them. I walked up gravely to the window in my dusty black coat, and looking through the glass saw all the world in yellow, blue, and green, running at the ring of pleasure.—The old with broken lances, and in helmets which had lost their vizards;—the young in armour bright which shone like gold, beplumed with each gay feather of the east,—all,—all, tilting at it like fascinated knights in tournaments of yore for fame and love.—
Alas, poor Yorick! cried I, what art thou doing here? On the very first onset of all this glittering clatter thou art reduced to an atom;—seek,—seek some winding alley, with a tourniquet at the end of it, where chariot never rolled or flambeau shot its rays;—there thou mayest solace thy soul in converse sweet with some kind grisette of a barber’s wife, and get into such coteries!—
–May I perish! if I do, said I, pulling out the letter which I had to present to Madame de R—.—I’ll wait upon this lady, the very first thing I do. So I called La Fleur to go seek me a barber directly,—and come back and brush my coat.
THE WIG
PARIS
When the barber came, he absolutely refused to have any thing to do with my wig: ’twas either above or below his art: I had nothing to do but to take one ready made of his own recommendation.
–But I fear, friend! said I, this buckle won’t stand.—You may emerge it, replied he, into the ocean, and it will stand.—
What a great scale is every thing upon in this city thought I.—The utmost stretch of an English periwig-maker’s ideas could have gone no further than to have “dipped it into a pail of water.”—What difference! ’tis like Time to Eternity!
I confess I do hate all cold conceptions, as I do the puny ideas which engender them; and am generally so struck with the great works of nature, that for my own part, if I could help it, I never would make a comparison less than a mountain at least. All that can be said against the French sublime, in this instance of it, is this:—That the grandeur is more in the word, and less in the thing. No doubt, the ocean fills the mind with vast ideas; but Paris being so far inland, it was not likely I should run post a hundred miles out of it, to try the experiment;—the Parisian barber meant nothing.—
The pail of water standing beside the great deep, makes, certainly, but a sorry figure in speech;—but, ’twill be said,—it has one advantage—’tis in the next room, and the truth of the buckle may be tried in it, without more ado, in a single moment.
In honest truth, and upon a more candid revision of the matter, The French expression professes more than it performs.
I think I can see the precise and distinguishing marks of national characters more in these nonsensical minutiæ than in the most important matters of state; where great men of all nations talk and stalk so much alike, that I would not give ninepence to choose amongst them.
I was so long in getting from under my barber’s hands, that it was too late to think of going with my letter to Madame R— that night: but when a man is once dressed at all points for going out, his reflections turn to little account; so taking down the name of the Hôtel de Modene, where I lodged, I walked forth without any determination where to go;—I shall consider of that, said I, as I walk along.
THE PULSE
PARIS
Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it! like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight: ’tis ye who open this door and let the stranger in.
–Pray, Madame, said I, have the goodness to tell me which way I must turn to go to the Opéra Comique?—Most willingly, Monsieur, said she, laying aside her work.—
I had given a cast with my eye into half a dozen shops, as I came along, in search of a face not likely to be disordered by such an interruption: till at last, this, hitting my fancy, I had walked in.
She was working a pair of ruffles, as she sat in a low chair, on the far side of the shop, facing the door.
–Tres volontiers, most willingly, said she, laying her work down upon a chair next her, and rising up from the low chair she was sitting in, with so cheerful a movement, and so cheerful a look, that had I been laying out fifty louis d’ors with her, I should have said—“This woman is grateful.”
You must turn, Monsieur, said she, going with me to the door of the shop, and pointing the way down the street I was to take,—you must turn first to your left hand,—mais prenez garde—there are two turns; and be so good as to take the second—then go down a little way and you’ll see a church: and, when you are past it, give yourself the trouble to turn directly to the right, and that will lead you to the foot of the Pont Neuf, which you must cross—and there any one will do himself the pleasure to show you.—
She repeated her instructions three times over to me, with the same goodnatur’d patience the third time as the first;—and if tones and manners have a meaning, which certainly they have, unless to hearts which shut them out,—she seemed really interested that I should not lose myself.
I will not suppose it was the woman’s beauty, notwithstanding she was the handsomest grisette, I think, I ever saw, which had much to do with the sense I had of her courtesy; only I remember, when I told her how much I was obliged to her, that I looked very full in her eyes,—and that I repeated my thanks as often as she had done her instructions.
I had not got ten paces from the door, before I found I had forgot every tittle of what she had said;—so looking back, and seeing her still standing in the door of the shop, as if to look whether I went right or not,—I returned back to ask her, whether the first turn was to my right or left,—for that I had absolutely forgot.—Is it possible! said she, half laughing. ’Tis very possible, replied I, when a man is thinking more of a woman than of her good advice.
As this was the real truth—she took it, as every woman takes a matter of right, with a slight curtsey.
–Attendez! said she, laying her hand upon my arm to detain me, whilst she called a lad out of the back shop to get ready a parcel of gloves. I am just going to send him, said she, with a packet into that quarter, and if you will have the complaisance to step in, it will be ready in a moment, and he shall attend you to the place.—So I walk’d in with her to the far side of the shop: and taking up the ruffle in my hand which she laid upon the chair, as if I had a mind to sit, she sat down herself in her low chair, and I instantly sat myself down beside her.
–He will be ready, Monsieur, said she, in a moment.—And in that moment, replied I, most willingly would I say something very civil to you for all these courtesies. Any one may do a casual act of good nature, but a continuation of them shows it is a part of the temperature; and certainly, added I, if it is the same blood which comes from the heart which descends to the extremes (touching her wrist) I am sure you must have one of the best pulses of any woman in the world.—Feel it, said she, holding out her arm. So laying down my hat, I took hold of her fingers in one hand, and applied the two forefingers of my other to the artery.—
–Would to heaven! my dear Eugenius, thou hadst passed by, and beheld me sitting in my black coat, and in my lack-a-day-sical manner, counting the throbs of it, one by one, with as much true devotion as if I had been watching the critical ebb or flow of her fever.—How wouldst thou have laugh’d and moralized upon my new profession!—and thou shouldst have laugh’d and moralized on.—Trust me, my dear Eugenius, I should have said, “There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.”—But a grisette’s! thou wouldst have said,—and in an open shop! Yorick—
–So much the better: for when my views are direct, Eugenius, I care not if all the world saw me feel it.